


Under a Paper Sun

by lacygrey



Category: Night at the Museum (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, UST, they need to talk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-04-13 19:36:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4534704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacygrey/pseuds/lacygrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jedtavius ficlets and drabbles</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Catching the Cowboy

**Author's Note:**

> All 'chapters' are separate unrelated works.

He can only keep up the pace for so long. All he needs is one more burst of strength and he can catch up to that cowboy and finally teach him a lesson. Octavius is still sore about getting shut in the stocks. Nobody, but nobody, does that to a Roman general.  
  
Jed, hampered by his chaps, isn’t running very fast. But Octavius is held back by the weight of his armour and sword. He just needs a bit more stamina but his arms and legs ache. He can’t catch up and Jed can’t widen the gap.

Finally, they’re both so exhausted they can’t go any further. So they simply stand looking at each other, Jed just out of sword’s reach. They stare it out, sides heaving. Too winded to yell insults. Jed’s eyes are vividly blue, wild and adamant, his face red from exertion. Neither will break the stare. Octavius is hot under his armour and it weighs on him. He would be in with a chance of if only he was carrying less.  
  
So be it. He will face his adversary unarmed. He casts aside his sword and with a yell resumes the chase.

***

He would have had him. Even unarmed, in hand-to hand combat, Octavius knew he was stronger than Jedediah. That was how he pinned him down in the first place, arms and legs trapped and no risk that Jed would dare head butt him while he had his armour and helmet on.  
  
Jed only got away by cheating. How could Octavius guess that the man would retaliate not with a violent struggle, but with something so underhand, so soft… gentle words he doesn’t understand and then an even gentler mouth. On his! It throws Octavius totally. He’s so shocked it’s a hundred times stronger than a blow from a fist. Then he’s so into that touch, that taste, that he doesn’t care. And in those seconds of inattention Jed twists like a snake, slips out of his grasp and is away. Octavius is left lying there, stunned.

It’s not vengeance he wants now. He doesn’t know what he wants now, only that he wants.

 


	2. Melancholy

Octavius is trying to boost morale. But words that make legions of the Roman army gladly dive into bottomless crates of packing peanuts aren't doing much for Jed. That Octy's trying is comforting though. When Octavius focusses on him alone, it’s like the rest of the world disappears.

But what could possibly be positive about their situation? That this is a whole new adventure? Another world they're going to see? That they’ll be together? Yes, of course they will, but frozen in the dark. It’s making Jed just plain angry. Though he doesn’t want to show it.

Jed wants things to be as they were. To be honest though, they are already not as they were, for now Octy and he are friends. Well, kind of. Perhaps he wants things to stay as they are. But then he's doesn't want things to get stale and boring. Perhaps he doesn't know what he wants, but it’s certainly not this looming emptiness.

Octy points out that when things change they can become even better. He doesn’t say how. And though Octavius doesn’t smile, his eyes do, like there’s some joke Jed missed.

That’s how he gets caught up in trying to work it out. What does Octavius know? Jed finds himself bothered once more, not about the future, but about that Roman getting one step ahead.

  



	3. Sand

He’s leaving a fine trail of sand behind him everywhere he goes. It follows him around like a constant reminder. Even when they're safely back home in New York he can still feel the grittiness on his skin as he moves. And there’s sand in the cockpit of the little plane, grains on the brim of his hat even after he’s brushed it, and when he tips his boots out he’s left with two tiny mountains of the stuff. He kicks at them and stamps them into the ground of the Western diorama until they disappear, lost in the familiar grey dust of home.

A fine dusting of sand clings to the hairs on his arms. When they catch the light, they shine like gold. It’s not what he feels like. He doesn’t want to know if it was a near death experience. He’d rather not know. Purge that thought, Forget the whole thing. The only remaining warmth comes from a desire for revenge, and even that’s a burden. 

So he goes off where he can't be seen and furiously shakes out each and every one of his clothes. He throws his jeans over the branch of a tree and thwacks hell out of them with Ma Dalton’s carpet beater till he's too exhausted to carry on. Then he goes and bathes in an ice cold pool on the mountain river, plunging straight in and letting the daggers of cold remind him who he is.


	4. Cerulean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Octavius admits some things to himself

You feel like you are standing on an island in a flawless ocean of blue. Its breath-taking, the color, deepened by the sun shining on and though it, giving every possible shade. You cannot look away. But the island is constantly shrinking around you and that perfect sea of blue is where you are to drown. You try to chase the image away -- you have never seen the sea, never even felt the sun -- these are second-hand memories your mind is tricking you with. They are not real, they are not yours. But the reason they keep coming is very much your own.

If this is love, you wish you could pull it from you like a stone around your neck and throw it into the deepest ocean. But you couldn’t do that because it is way too beautiful.

There is not one move you could make that could work for you. You cannot even hint at those feelings: subtly gets you nowhere, openness already fell flat. You fight to maintain the status quo and lie by omission. You mock yourself bitterly, trapped by your own sentimentally, a woeful fate for one as strong as you. A mighty warrior? That is yet more borrowed memories. You are nothing but an actor, meant to look and think the part. Behind the costume you are nothing but a lovesick fool.

There was a time you believed those memories, the ones that aren’t your own. Where is that strength now? What use is second-hand battle strategy here?   What use?

Strategy… At the end of a long and dark tunnel, one you recognise all too well, a light appears.


	5. Proof

Upstairs on the very top floor, there’s a hidden room with a glass dome for a roof. It’s full of old laboratory junk, wandering pot plants and books that haven’t been opened in years. Were it not for the fact that the plants are still alive and sometimes there’s an empty teacup by one of the chairs, you’d think the place was abandoned.

Jed and Octavius only go there at night of course, when the moon and forest of leaves cast crazy shadows and it’s a struggle not to imagine all manner of monsters.

On a clear night, there’s a fine view of the stars. They lie back on the leaf of a rubber plant staring upward at the sky.

“It could be a painted ceiling, you know," suggests Jed. “But one for the giants." Octavius knows that, in reality, his friend is impressed. This place is special. It resounds with its own kind of quiet; even in the museum, which is not often a peaceful place at night. "Or perhaps they put in little lights, just to make us think it’s real, when actually everyone is under a giant dome."

Octavius knows Jed often feels trapped by their situation. He can be quite maddening at times. But now he finds himself drawn into the argument.

“So how do you explain that the stars move?”

“Move? Okay, well I guess some of them, perhaps – them shooting stars – but that’d be animation.”

"I think all of them move, together, just very, very slowly.”

Now Octavius has recently learnt that, incredibly, it’s the earth that moves, not the stars, but that won't help his argument at present.

“Okay Ockie. Prove it.”

“I can do that." He can feel the smile growing across his face as he proposes the solution. "But you’ll have to come up here with me every night and watch them to make sure.”


	6. Current

The touch is slight, just the tip of an elbow against his arm, but it sends a river of warmth running through Octavius’ whole body via that one connection. It can’t be Jedediah doing that. Look at him. He’s just the same as ever. He might look like he’s glowing, but that’s just his coloration. No, it must be Octavius, blowing things out of all proportion, feeling things that aren’t there. Because, if attraction is only flowing one way between them, it’s certainly the other way. And Jedediah shows no sign of having felt it, however closely Octavius observes.


	7. Effortless and Bottomless

All of a sudden in the middle of an otherwise ordinary night Jed would realize that he’d drifted away, gazing into space while the rest of the world around him carried on. It was easy to laugh it off, slip into automatic; with the same motions and phrases as always. He’d take his place among the others, still good ol’ Jed to anybody else. He wondered if it was invisible on him, this change. It was not altogether uncomfortable, like a simultaneous sinking and floating, a longing on to hang onto solid ground, but a realization that it was no longer there or, at least, no longer like he remembered it. He had no idea what would come of this. Perhaps that was just as well. There was no going back. This was unknown territory; the best kind of land there is.

Most of all he wondered if it was the same for Octavius, this change. Jed wanted to stare at the man, pinpoint what had changed, whether anything showed. But if he stared he’d give the game away and of course Octavius didn’t look the same, not to Jed, even in just a second’s glance.

He never had known where they were going. He’d thought he had control, that he held all the cards. Now he had no idea what game they were playing. It was worse than warfare, but better than any feeling he’d ever known.


	8. Cruel Summer

Rome is infested with couples. Everywhere in the city they wander the streets, the plazas, the parks, arm in arm, hand in hand. They kiss each other on the benches without caring who sees, for they see only one another. Its painful to watch. A couple is never merely two people together - they are always joined somewhere, if only by their cries as they chase one another under the colonnades. People in love become another kind of being. At midday, they hide in the shade, driven by the heat or in search of seclusion. There’s no peace to be had from them, no quiet spot that a man can find to sit and think: all the quiet shady places are taken by pairs absorbed in each other.

There’s no avoiding them. Did the hot weather bring them out? Make them spring from the pavements like weeds. No, in truth, they have always been there. But it's only now that he’s noticed them.


	9. Under Wraps

Jed’s got two fingers slid just under the sleeve of his tunic. No-one can see them there but they dig into Octavius skin slightly harder than necessary **.** Instinctively, Octavius tenses and those fingers tense right along with him.

To anyone looking on, yes, Jed has his hand Octavius’ arm and perhaps Octavius is looking at bit surprised about it, no more. What’s going on inside is another matter. It’s a confession… that things go further than appearances. That he’s not been wrong about Jed all this time. But it’s also a warning, that this must stay concealed.

Octavius hasn’t needed secrecy in the past. With power has gone the power to do as he pleases. So this is new. And it lends a whiplash of heat to everything, the fact that they’re keeping something just to themselves. Something that promises to be intense, but invisible to all, completely under wraps. A challenge. Just what he likes.


	10. Making an effort

Jed has an unusual smell today.  It’s none of the typical scents Octavius associates with him: leather, smoke, dust, sweat, horses, and, on the worst days, cattle or the powder the Western men use to blow holes in the mountain (or scare off the Romans -- though it’s been a long time since that worked and, as Octavius has frequently needed to remind Jed, too old to crack jokes about and never funny in the first place).  No, this is different. This is a clean smell, or rather an absence of smell. Octavius has grown used to Jed being habitually grimy from the toil of his work and is unsettled by him freshly bathed and clothed.  
  
Octavius thinks he’d have to get really close to find that usual Jed smell again.  Strangely, he misses it, even the sweat, though he’s fine without the reminder of the livestock.  But, even if he doesn’t care for whatever Jed washed himself with or doused himself with after, one thing is clear: He made an effort;  Octavius is tempted to think that he made that effort for him, which makes him kind of proud, even though, deep down he prefers Jed just as he is. Octavius decides that what they need here and now is another adventure, one with plenty of mishaps and exertion to undo Jed’s strangely awkward cleanness, and get back the man he knows.  
  



	11. The Good Listener

  
Jedediah hasn’t spotted him yet, but that’s not surprising. Octavius isn’t wearing his usual red and he left his helmet and armour at home. Today, he deliberately wore a simple tunic and now he sees that it blends in with the colour of the dry soil here. He wanted to strip off the defensive layer before coming to talk to Jed. But, with all the things he wants to say, it feels as though he’s about to go into battle. Except, unlike for battle, he doesn’t have a plan. He just has a heartload of rocks and unspoken truths.  
  
Jed is some way away from his working party. Good. He’s leading a young unsaddled horse and doesn’t seem in a hurry to be getting anywhere. Octavius comes close enough that he could hail Jed but he doesn’t. Not yet.

He can hear Jed’s voice though, low and gentle, but not his words. Is Jed talking to someone? There’s no one around, no one but the man himself and the horse. Octavius can’t make out any words, they sound like a soft crooning sometimes. He wonders if Jed is actually saying something or whether it’s part of the horse-taming process.  
  
He sees Jed rub the animal’s nose, then start brushing it’s back. This is not the image Octavius had of these people. Cowboys are known to take wild horses and break them to ride by force, pitting their strength and skill against the will of a wild animal. A challenge worthy of the arena. Yet here is Jed taming a beast through kindness…

 

***

  
You can tell a horse anything and they’ll never breathe it to a soul. Maybelline is Tara’s foal and, here in the museum, she’ll stay a colt forever. Gotta be a good life, never carrying nobody. Still Jed trains her, goes through the motions of what comes natural to him. It’s part of the role the both of them play, he and Maybelline.

He’ll groom her, get her to let him lift her feet, take her on the lead and let her canter around him. But sometimes, like today, he’ll just walk her and talk and she’ll go along with him like she always does. Now, she can’t rightly understand the ways of men. But then neither does Jed sometimes. That’s why the things he never says to people he can tell to Maybelline. Some of it would make a fella blush.  
  
So he tells her about that one time with Octy and how he wishes they hadn’t and how he’s so scared that their friendship will never be the same again and how stupid he was. Doesn’t she know how men can be stupid? Octy can be stupid too as it goes, but this time it was Jed. He tells it all that soft whisper that calms skittish horses. But who’s he trying to fool? If there’s a skittish one here, it’s not Maybelline.

 


	12. The worst-kept secret in the museum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five reasons why Jed and Octy’s relationship is worst-kept secret in the museum

1/ They’re always together when they’re not at home and even sometimes when they are. People have had to get used to their unusual appearance in each other’s dioramas.

2/ They go off exploring who one knows where, so folks draw their own conclusions.

3/ They sometimes come back looking somewhat dishevelled, especially Jed, which gets tongues wagging.

4/ They imitate one another and laugh and finish one another’s sentences. Though they mostly don’t get mad, sometimes it escalates into an argument and they have go to off someplace to “settle things” (and return looking dishevelled).

5/ But above all, because they never looked so happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should I have posted these ficlets separately?


End file.
